


and if it makes you lose your breath

by flashbacksandechoes (xpd)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, First Kiss, M/M, Making Out, an EK walks into a bar..., no beta we die like men, or is richie the punchline?, there's no punchline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:22:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28823658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpd/pseuds/flashbacksandechoes
Summary: “Hey,” he says while he slides into the booth. He brought a coaster to put under his bottle. Richie snorts. The table is filthy, with a few very distinct rings left behind by wayward glasses. And they’re all over hundreds of signatures and words scribbled onto the table by pens and markers. There’s a horrible anatomically incorrect doodle of a penis in the upper left corner.EK frowns, or rather, his pre-existent frown deepens, “What’s so fucking funny?’Richie shakes his head; he’s not looking for a fight tonight.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	and if it makes you lose your breath

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i wrote this in one evening and one morning and it's. well, it sure is something. has this been done before? absolutely, yeah, 100%. does it still hit? i'd like to think so, yes. 
> 
> this is a companion fic for my social media au [background characters](https://twitter.com/bgc_au) and it probably won't make much sense to you out of context. sorry! it follows the events of updates 98-100. 
> 
> title from "say it" by maggie rogers. i recommend listening to it in the background!
> 
> enjoy!

Someone two tables to the left is very loudly recounting the events of some crazy night, but the booming music and the chatter of other patrons drowns it out enough for the words to stay incomprehensible. The bar is dim-lit, so all the faces get blurry, it’s just eyes-noses-chins of people Richie has no interest in meeting. He’s on his second beer, frowning at the contents of his bottle like the beverage offended him personally. It tastes like piss, frankly, or what Richie imagines piss would taste like if he ever tried drinking it. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be compelled to do so, not if it tastes like this shitty lager from a cheap bar, that’s for sure.

His phone lies screen up on the sticky table and Richie's flipping through the home screen absentmindedly, not really looking at it, when it vibrates and knocks slightly into the bottle. Richie startles out of his piss musings. He’s had the group chat muted all day today, only texting them his plans to give a sign of life, and it’s not like anyone else ever texts him, but he figures it’s some notification from the bank, maybe. Disinterested but bored out of his mind, he picks up the phone just to see a different notification on his screen. It’s for an AirDrop, it says. “EK would like to share a note,” it says. He blinks a few times and looks up, trying to discreetly locate – possibly, incredibly, unfathomably – EK, or EEK, or whatever his actual name is. The hand that’s not holding his phone travels from the beer bottle that’s slightly covered in perspiration to his scalp. He tries to fix his hair, stupidly self-conscious, but that only messes it up more, the water making it stick in odd places. He huffs and clears his throat for no reason before he accepts the AirDrop. 

_Hey dickhead, you got a fly in that beer or what,_ asks the note, no question mark and no other signature. EK it still is.

He wonders what the fuck his deal is. Their last conversation was over a month ago and it was far from amicable. The guy was, is, an asshole, with no social skills or tact – and this is coming from Richie Tozier, of all people. 

He frowns. Before he gets the chance to just text EEK a bunch of question marks, he gets another AirDrop.

 _What I’m saying is you look miserable,_ this one says and Richie can’t help but breathe a laugh at that. Flattering. 

He’s not. Miserable, that is. It’s just been a weird day. He tried writing in the morning, but he just couldn’t, he wasted paper on half a joke and a few sentences that would fit better in a teenage diary than his tight five. Boo hoo, no one understands me, boo hoo, I’m lonely and boo hoo, isn’t it fucking hysterical how I’m the funny one.

He tries not to overindulge in feeling sorry for himself. He usually reserves those feelings for when he’s disgustingly drunk or for late at night, when his eyelids are heavy but he can’t fall asleep anyway. But today started with a burnt omelette and at least five pages of paper torn up and crumpled in the trash, so he’s allowed himself to cancel this whole Friday up front and spent it doing nothing, watching shitty reality TV and eating take out. When he got bored of all that he grabbed his keys and his phone and wandered through the city until he ended up here, in this no-name bar, apparently a bar that EK is now in. Somewhere close, close enough to see Richie. He looks around again.

The phone vibrates in his hand once more and this time it informs him EK wants to share a picture. It’s the fucking Captain America screencap, with the caption “On your left”, the same one he sent EK back in June, during the Benverly date fiasco. Richie feels weirdly touched by this and when he looks to his left, sure enough, there the man is. It frustrates him that he still doesn’t know his real name. He’s a fair amount of distance away, but Richie recognizes the eyebrows permanently set in a frown and the long line of his nose, the sharp angle of his chin. He’s in a suit, some dark colour with a white button up under the jacket. Richie swallows. Something confusingly pleasant tugs at his insides.

There’s tension in the set of EK’s shoulders and he’s looking at Richie intently, but he stays put. Giving Richie the chance to dismiss him if he wants.

He sees the AirDrops for what they are – a white flag of sorts. Their last text exchange ended badly and if Richie is to be honest, he doesn’t feel like looking at it right now either. So he gets it; nods at EK and pats the seat next to him a few times. It takes a moment for the other man to process this, different emotions passing through his face, but he eventually stands up and approaches Richie’s table, his own beer in hand. 

“Hey,” he says while he slides into the booth. He brought a coaster to put under his bottle. Richie snorts. The table is filthy, with a few very distinct rings left behind by wayward glasses. And they’re all over hundreds of signatures and words scribbled onto the table by pens and markers. There’s a horrible anatomically incorrect doodle of a penis in the upper left corner. 

EK frowns, or rather, his pre-existent frown deepens, “What’s so fucking funny?’

Richie shakes his head; he’s not looking for a fight tonight.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, half-joking. Up close, he can see him clearly for the first time. His eyes, even in the barely-there light of the bar, are huge and warm even when he looks perpetually pissed off. There’s a dimple in his cheek when he sets his mouth straight, maybe unsure whether to smile or frown some more. 

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs. A beat, and then, “I wasn’t expecting to bump into you.”

“And yet here we are.” Richie takes another sip of his beer. He feels EK’s eyes on him even when his own are closed, and when he opens them again to look back, the man is already looking away. Richie gestures towards Eddie’s outfit with his bottle. “What’s with the get up?”

Eddie looks down at himself, like he doesn’t remember what he’s wearing. 

“I came here straight from work.”

“Rough day?”

They’re dancing so cautiously around the elephant in the room, it’s almost funny. Here’s this huge thing, a fight really, and a month’s worth of silence, between two strangers, and now they’re chatting about insignificant shit like it’s normal. Like Richie didn’t stay in his apartment for three solid days about it because he was upset about how it went down. And it’s ridiculous, because he still doesn’t even know the other guy’s name and at this point maybe he’s afraid to ask.

EK considers the question for a moment, drinks his beer, loosens his tie. Richie keeps his gaze firmly fixed on his fingers against the dark fabric

Objectively speaking, he’s. Well, he’s hot. It’s really fucking unfortunate, but Richie’s isn’t going to lie to himself. He thought maybe he was good looking only from afar, he wished so especially after they text-screamed at each other and after the weeks of radio silence, but unfortunately, Richie is one hundred percent attracted to this angry weasel. Just his fucking luck.

“Just boring,” he answers at last.

Richie snickers to himself. “Hey, what do you do?” he asks, a shit eating grin on his face.

It’s risky, alluding to it at all. They’re having a civil conversation now, but it can easily turn into another fight in a second. EK looks unimpressed, but otherwise non-threatening.

“I’m a risk analyst,” he says, but all Richie hears is elevator music in his head.

“Fascinating,” Richie nods, exaggerated and annoying, like everything he does and is.

He receives a sharp glare in return and it makes him positively giddy. His hands itch to push all of this guy’s buttons. And then, if allowed, to undo some buttons as well.

“Whatever, dickwad, you tell bad jokes on stage,” EK grumbles. He grips his beer bottle at the bottom, way lower than a normal person would, and lifts it to his lips. Richie tries so hard not to stare, but when he accidentally catches the guy’s eyes, there’s a certain glint in them. Like he’s inside Richie’s head, parsing through his every unsavory thought.

“You call them bad, I call them viral.” Richie fights hard to stay on topic.

“You know how much stupid shit goes viral everyday? You’re not special,” EK answers and Richie allows it to sting only a little, because they’re joking. This is joke territory. He’s not going to get upset over jokes, now. “You want to go for a smoke?” he asks then, and Richie tilts his head.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Me neither.”

There’s a challenge in the way this guy’s staring at him. Richie doesn’t want to, shouldn’t, won’t assume, but there’s that tugging again, right there in his stomach. _We’ll see where the night takes me,_ he texted the group chat, but he wasn’t being serious then. Now it feels like he’s jinxed himself.

EK stands up first and doesn’t wait for Richie to do the same, just walks off in the direction of the backdoor. Richie’s gaze falls onto his backside involuntarily. He blames it on the perfectly tailored suit pants. When he disappears behind the door, Richie blinks a few times and wonders if he’s drunker than he thought. And then he wonders the same for EK. His almost empty bottle is still there on the coaster, the label mostly peeled off, with a small pile of its remnants sticking to the table. Richie hasn’t even noticed him doing that. 

Seconds feel like minutes while he gathers himself. When he finally gets up from the uncomfortable booth he feels perfectly fine, balance in check, vision clear. It makes it that much worse when he pockets his phone and heads for the backdoor as well.

The guy, absurdly nameless, stands in the dark alley, leaning on the brick wall. His head snaps up when he hears the door open and his eyes widen the slightest bit, and it’s funny considering his eyes are already big, in a constant state of being wide open. They’re very pretty, Richie notes, which is not something he usually thinks about people’s eyes, not even the guys’ he’s dated in the past. There wasn’t much eye contact to speak of, anyway.

“Hey,” EK says. His hands are buried deep in his pockets.

“Hey again,” he nods, unsure what to do next. He doesn’t know what’s allowed, what the protocol is, or even if this is— what he thinks it is. Maybe they’re just going to talk, like adults instead of misunderstanding each other in text form. 

“I wanted to say sorry,” EK starts. So, talking. Richie can do talking, no matter what his gut tells him. “Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed for you to open up to me.”

Richie tentatively takes his place next to the man, mirroring his position. They both focus on the uneven brick of the wall in front of them.

“Yeah, you shouldn’t have.”

He can see in his peripheral how EK’s head turns to him so fast, he should’ve gotten whiplash from it. Richie does the same, at normal speed, and raises a brow at him.

“That’s all you have to say?” He has the gall to sound pissed off, like Richie’s the one in the wrong. 

“What else do you want me to say? I’m not apologizing to you, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

Those three days he spent moping in his apartment, he thought a lot about the fight. He briefly considered that maybe he overreacted, but after twelve hours of drafting and redrafting some pathetic apology text he realised, _no._ He has every right not to humor a guy he barely knows, telling him his business just so that he can feel better about himself. He doesn’t owe him shit.

“What the fuck, dude,” EK’s eyebrows slant downwards. There’s that dimple again, in the middle of his left cheek. “You started that whole thing!”

“Oh my God, _dude_ ,” he emphasises the last word, wrapping it tightly in irony like a Christmas present, a bow on top. “We’ve already been through this! Did you enjoy our argument so much you just needed a repeat in real life? Was dunking on me virtually not enough for you?”

EK stands up straight; his suit jacket is probably already stained from the dirty wall. There’s a fire in his eyes. 

“I was trying to be nice here––,” he begins and Richie interrupts him with a laugh.

“We must have a different definition of _nice,_ then.”

He sees as the other man hesitates, hands flexing by his sides and his stomach bottoms out as he realises he’s about to get punched. EK is shorter than him by a few inches, but he can no doubt throw a mean left hook, if the way he fills out the arms of this jacket has anything to say about it. Richie has only a moment to figure out if he’ll knock his head into the solid brick behind him and lose consciousness before it happens. EK gets closer, too close to attack, and grips the front of Richie’s shirt. It clicks way too late for Richie, when his lips are already against his, that he greatly misjudged the situation.

It doesn’t start slow or gentle. EK kisses rough and fast, like he’s on a tight deadline, an invisible clock hanging above his head, red digits very quickly counting down to zero. Richie has never been good at submitting assignments on time, so when the other man stops and tries to move away, Richie pulls him back in by the neck, tongue swiping EK’s lower lip.

“What the fuck is your name, anyway,” he mumbles into his mouth. His other hand travels down his back and settles on his ass, because it’s been on the back of his mind ever since the man turned to leave the bar.

“Eddie,” he says and sets on a journey – kissing the corner of Richie’s mouth, his jaw, the delicate patch of skin under his ear, finally his neck.

“Eddie,” Richie repeats, low and breathless. He’d make a joke about a grown man going by a nickname, but that’d be hypocritical of him. Instead, he slips his fingers in the belt loops of Eddie’s pants and brings him even closer. He feels Eddie right there against his thigh and he swallows hard, before catching his lips with his own again. 

He doesn’t think it’s going to go any further, not in this random back alley, in front of God and the New York rats, but he’s content just making out with Eddie until maybe the end of time. As long as his hands are frantically travelling through the planes of Richie’s chest, tugging and pulling at his t-shirt with no apparent end goal. As long as he’s biting his lower lip as if his life depended on it.

But of course. Richie never knows when to shut up, where to draw the line, this is exactly why his friends beep him on a daily basis. He pulls back to take a breath and Eddie continues his mission to pepper Richie’s neck with kisses and barely-there nips of teeth.

“This is so stupid, can’t wait ‘till Ben and Bev hear about this,” he says to the brick wall, like the absolute idiot that he is.

Suddenly, everything stops. Eddie stills, lips hovering over Richie’s collarbone, his quickened breath tickling his skin. Despite it being New York at night, it’s completely silent. The air travelling through Richie’s lungs halts its course.

“What?”

Eddie takes a step back. His eyes are crystal clear, polar opposite of Richie’s dazed ones. It takes him a while to remember he does still have his glasses on, it’s just the alcohol and the total lack of blood in his head. 

“What?” he echoes. He’s cold in the night air, his body missing the temporary warmth provided by Eddie’s proximity. He wishes he could permanently sew his mouth shut.

“I told you, we shouldn’t tell anyone,” says Eddie, like Richie’s heard so many times before.

There’s an invisible rope tightly wound around Richie’s chest and there’s a heavy weight attached at the end. Eddie just tightened it even more, then pushed the weight off a cliff.

“Right,” Richie coughs out and smiles, hopes it’s not as wobbly as his legs feel. “I assumed that stopped being the case the moment you shoved your tongue down my throat.”

“I think I should leave,” Eddie ignores Richie’s words which seems unfair, but that’s on Richie for having any expectations at all.

Richie doesn’t answer. He watches as Eddie takes a few steps backwards, looking at him with his stupid big eyes. His shirt is half-untucked from his pants. Richie feels like he’s gonna throw up. Blessedly, Eddie disappears around the corner before he does that.

Fuck.

“Fuck!” he exclaims to nobody, to the rats lurking in the corner, to himself. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, throat burning with acid all the way down to his stomach. “Fucking shit.”

He leans his head on the dirty brick and finds comfort in the fact that he’ll never have to look Eddie Kwhatever-the-fuck-his-lastname-is in the eyes ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> come [chat](https://twitter.com/kaspsbrak) please i would love to chat x


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